Busy gap, Black River Stages in 1wk

It lives! Tonight I drove the GTI, with the new-to-me 9A 2.0l and new-to-the-world body harness with way awesome switchpanel (and hopefully, improving from garbled stock wiring, way awesome reliability for all projects to come). This is cutting it very close considering that we need to pack up next Wednesday night, something which has been both a source of stress and motivation. (what if the new trans was bad or engine has fundamental damage which I didn't know about? etc - - but it is OK so far!)



See also the glimpse at the new gauges and switchpanel, and shove your face into the cat on that video...um, catalytic converter...displacing the muffler because the header displaced it! That thing REALLY trumpets under load, pretty smooth sounding at speed.

I think Kenneth and I have been putting ~20 hours a week into that car for the past three weeks, heh, or that's what it feels like. Because now it's go time: we're going to Black River Stages next week in Watertown NY. Matt Bushore will be towing us out with his terrifying ambulance rig, we're all signed up and paid, and the hotel doesn't know what's about to hit it (a lot of really tired people, that's what...)

Dmitriy, who's been our fearless crew chief, is returning to his permanent role - which is driver for his own car. We've been lucky to have him, but we're really excited to run with him on stage, especially with his sweeet new suspension, I don't know how we're going to keep up! (of course, see below post for Dmitriy's new suspension). But - we're very excited to have the intrepid Kyle Steinkamp with us again, he'll be our crew chief, and between him and Matt we'll be in good hands. My goal is to finish with no major damage to the car (or at least, due to driver error). I've gone through a rear suspension each rally so far, so at least, I want to finish with intact rear wheels...

Stay tuned, we'll have many updates, pictures and video in the next two weeks!